Burning From The Inside
by 4. Black Queen
Summary: Jean Grey/Emma Frost femslash. There's a fine line between love and hate. What happens when fire and ice collide?
1. Chapter 1

It didn't matter that Emma had left bruises on her thighs and wrists that blazed sore and aching for days and sometimes weeks afterward. She pretended not to notice the deep, red lines that were slashed across her back from Emma's fingernails, despite the fact that they stung fiercely each time she would lay down to sleep at night, or each time she'd run scalding hot water over them in the shower, tears stinging her eyes, as if trying to burn the woman's presence away as it lingered against her exposed skin.

It didn't matter, as long as she didn't think about it. Zombie-like she moved through the long hours that turned into the days that turned into the weeks and months of the empty existence that she'd long since called her life. She waded through the passing moments like one might through quicksand, through icy water, and she watched life go on all around her through a haze of smoke and faded glass. Close, but at a distance.

Always, perpetually, at a distance.

And it didn't matter that the only time she felt alive anymore, felt connected, felt the fear and the self-loathing melt away was when her eyes were closed, when Emma's breath was hot against her neck and her fingers were buried inside of her.

It meant nothing. It was a burst of on-going insanity, a kind of numb out-of-body experience, a bizarre coping mechanism. It was a need for comfort, a desperate yearning for understanding because it was her and only her who could even come close, an outlet for the severe and silent rage she felt, for the feeling of raw, all-consuming emptiness that had overshadowed the spot in her soul where her heart now lay, cowering and barely beating.

At least, these may have been the conclusions that Jean Grey would have come to had she actually thought about it. Had she tried to make sense of it. But she never did, and she probably never would.

It was winter.

A cold, blank day, with no color and no breeze, just a perpetual snowfall that coated the earth like fallen clouds.

It had been eight weeks since Scott's death.

Jean Grey was standing on the rolling back lawns of Xavier Institute, in front of the frozen pond and beside Ororo's greenhouses.

Her dark, evergreen gaze was aimed slanted off into the nearby forest. It was completely, utterly quiet out here. It was still. Even the bravest of forest animals dared not leave the warmth and comfort of their woodland homes on this frosty December evening, and yet the telepath had ventured outdoors with little thought.

She wore only a light-knit sweater and fleece-lined boots to protect her from the cold, but she wasn't shivering in the slightest.

How long she'd been out here she couldn't have said. A minute or an hour or a day ... it all seemed the same.

As she slowly reached up to brush a fallen strand of red from her eyes, she registered a faint shift in the air behind her.

She said nothing. She didn't even blink.

Emma Frost stopped a few paces behind Jean, letting gravity have its way with the ivory material of her cloak as she lowered her hands to her hips. After a long silence, she spoke. She knew the other woman had sensed her coming, probably from the moment she'd stepped foot onto the grounds, and so there really was no use employing any sort of verbal preliminary.

"I've come to gather you for supper."

Jean didn't miss a beat. "You can tell Ororo thank you, but I'm not terribly hungry at the moment."

Emma's countenance formed a sudden reluctant look, and she breathed in slowly. "I came of my own accord."

"Really." The redhead sounded entirely unconvinced.

"Yes." The word was flat, with a sharp edge.

"To whatever I owe for this delightful revelation," Jean began, her voice as icy as the air around them, "I'm afraid I'll have to take a rein check. Kindly tell Ororo I'll be back up to the mansion shortly."

The breath that Emma sucked in was dry and cold. Mouth tingling slightly, she bared her teeth and stepped forward. A branch snapped beneath her feet. "It must become torturously wearisome, Grey. Seething. Sulking about in sloppy self-pity and hating me all of the time."

Abruptly, the redhead's jaw grew tight - just like Scott's always used to when he was trying not to let his top blow over. "I lost my husband two months ago, Emma. Don't give yourself so much goddamn credit."

Emma let out a luscious, bitter laugh. "You grew so accustomed and comfortable with being the only resident mind-reader here, Miss Grey. You seem to forget - or perhaps disregard? - the fact that I can see into that exquisite psyche of yours. I know things about you that the others don't." Here, Jean slammed her telepathic shields down so hard that Emma's face twitched ever so slightly - but not once did it loose its smooth elegance. There was a pause. "You're a puzzle, Jean Grey. Constantly saying one thing while thinking quite another. Well, which is it?" She asked suddenly when Jean didn't respond, allowing another brief pause before turning her icy blue eyes directly onto the back of the other woman's head. "That he was with me instead of you, that he had moved on while you were still not able to, or that he simply didn't crave you any longer? Either way, darling, it's a question of jealousy and not of an indistinct and reasonless dislike."

At these words Jean's head snapped around to fix the blonde with an over-the-shoulder stare that was anything but indistinct and reasonless.

There was a dangerous pause, and then, unblinkingly, "He didn't. love. you." Each word was punctuated with gritted teeth, with a raging defiance, with a pang of heartbreak that cracked to pieces as the words reached Emma's ears, and then crumbled to her feet. Jean hadn't meant for it to be so obvious, but Emma could do little not to take note. Tactfully, she chose not to let it affect the next words out of her mouth, but even she could feel the woman's pain without exercising an ounce of mental prowess, and it angered her that much more because she knew exactly what it felt like.

"Then why," she whispered, as if speaking some sacred truth, "did he not return to you?" The words held more than a little vanity and self-satisfaction, but the majority of it was simple fact. It hurt Jean like a slap to the face, but Emma had not necessarily meant it to come across that way. Contrary to popular belief, she had not come here intent on starting another fight with Jean Grey. It just often happened that way.

"You self-righteous parasite," The redhead hissed, turning around to face the other woman fully.

"I lost a man dear to me also, Jean, or does this ever-so-conveniently slip your mind? It certainly wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

"I doubt you've cared for a single living soul in your life," Jean retaliated, regarding the blonde with a look of mild disgust. She suddenly realized an uncanny resemblance between Emma's ashen complexion and the bitter, colorless winter sky overhead. "You've done nothing but manipulate and sleep your way to the top of every seemingly meaningful occurrence or innocent victim that's unwittingly crawled itself into your web - including my husband. You don't have to be a telepath to see it; everybody sees right through you, Emma Frost. You're as transparent as the world you live in." She had waited far too long to say these words to this woman, and in finally doing so she found her veins rushing with a dark adrenaline. "Why do you think the team hasn't warmed to you yet, Frost? Why do you think they talk about you behind your back, avoid you in the hallways and at mealtimes? Because you haven't given us any reason not to? Because we're a family, and you don't understand the meaning nor the implications of the word? Because you're cold and manipulative, and those are exactly the sorts of people we, as X-Men, are working against? Pick your favorite, Emma, because they're all true."

But naturally, Emma had a few things she'd been meaning to tell - or rather, to shout angrily at - Jean, as well. "Oh, of course, I'm terribly sorry - I've forgotten the protocol. Only from you can hypocrisy be deemed excusable, yes? Only from virginal and virtuous Jean Grey, who could never be accused of being anything less than exemplary and utterly faultless, lest her personal and political righteousness be marred. You claim to practice what you preach, am I quite correct? Well pardon me, Queen Guinevere -" here, Emma's voice was poison, " - but though I may rightly be denounced as a common whore and a soulless bloodsucker, I wasn't the one fucking Sir Lancelot on my marriage bed two nights ago."

The silence that rung between them after these words was complete.

Jean stared. It was quite obvious that Emma was speaking about Logan, but she didn't even bother asking how she knew this. "That is none of your fucking business."

"Isn't it?" Emma asked, brows raised. "I seem to recall you fishing about in my sex life whenever you damn well felt like it."

"My god." Jean barked out a thoroughly humorless laugh, and brought a slender hand up to her forehead to grasp tightly at a handful of hair. "I am not going to humor you with this, Emma. This is so beyond ... beyond ..."

"- Beyond what, exactly? You? Surely it can't be me. As we've already rather solidly established, I'm horribly indecent and have no sense of moral principle whatsoever. So let's start with this question, shall we: how hard did he make you come? On a scale of one to ten, let's presume."

"Jesus Christ." Jean turned away again, infuriated, feeling the walls of confidence and tenacity that had surrounded her previously now beginning to collapse like a house of playing cards. She hid her face in her hand. She'd be damned if she would let Emma see her breaking down.

"No answer? It's quite all right; we'll come back to that one. Were you top or bottom? Did you scream his name? Did he scream yours? Did you have a 'spiritual revelation', as the new-age aficionados are affectionately calling it these days? Or ... " and her words slanted into a deep and all-too-well-knowing frankness, " ... was it nothing like you thought it would be? Was it painful, heartbreakingly unsatisfactory? Did he not feel you, understand you, want to hold you afterwards and assure you that yes, everything will be all right?"

Jean had fallen absolutely silent, her body as still as a painting, her hand now covering her face in such a way that made it impossible to guess at what she was feeling. Though of course, Emma had a strong idea.

She let the moment fall into a shrill silence.

After a period, she stepped forward two paces. Now standing directly in front of Jean - close enough to feel her body heat and to be sucked into the psychic whirlwind that was Jean's pained and self-deprecating confusion and mourning - the woman spoke again. This time it was in a completely different tone; her voice almost a whisper. "I know why you did it. But you didn't quite get the consolance nor the closure that you were yearning for, did you, Jean Grey? When he stroked your face or whispered your name, did you miss Scott so much, so achingly, that you thought your heart would break all over again?"

More silence. It was indeed as if Jean's heart had been ripped abruptly from its shadowy corner in her chest, only it was Emma that grasped it firmly in her palm, felt the blood slowly trickling down her hand to pool at her feet.

"He doesn't understand how you feel," Emma continued. "He doesn't grasp how deeply this loss has mangled you - how often you still cry yourself to sleep. How often you pray to a God you're not even sure exists for something to take you away from all of this, to carry you away to anyplace but the one where you can still feel him the most. How often you feel you'd rather just end it all, but can't fathom actually going through with it, because despite it all, you're too damn selfless and more than a little terrified. He can't, Jean. He can't understand this. Logan wants the woman he once knew. The Jean Grey that he fell in love with. The one that he had crafted and perfected in his mind, the one that he knew would be his once Scott was gone and done with - which, by the way, would have only been a matter of time, if you follow his reasoning. But his fairytale has been ruined, and now, he can't comprehend why. He thought that you'd come bounding into his arms, that he would be the only one to console you. Instead, you stared past his eyes and withdrew into yourself. You're not the woman he once knew. Not just to him - but to everyone. They all look at you differently. And you know this only all too well." And, as if reading Jean's mind - which she most certainly could have been - she went on. " With me, it doesn't matter. They've never liked me. They never will. In fact, I'd much prefer it that way. But you - you were a friend. A teammate. You held the bunch together. You and Scott - you had the perfect lives. Ideal role models for the students, ideal for them to look upon you, ideal for preparation to be transformed into the morally righteous leaders for future generations, and ideal to carry on the legacy of the X-Men and to keep fighting the good fight. To avoid violent protest at all costs. To uphold the dream of a perfect world - a perfect world that doesn't exist. And despite your facade, you're not even sure if you believe in any of it anymore. Face it: you're damaged goods, Jean Grey."

Jean's body fell entirely limp. Emma was inside her mind, and she hadn't the strength nor the will to keep her out. She was vocalizing thoughts that Jean herself didn't want to admit to, thoughts she had been avoiding for months, and yet Emma was speaking them in her exact words, in her exact thoughts. Each and every one of them were completely true, whether she had come to terms with it or not. She hadn't found the escape she so desperately seeked in Logan; in the one person she believed, and hoped, might be her savior. She had fought it, told herself it would never work, but though she knew the truth all along, knew it would do no good, she had needed to believe in something. She prayed that it wouldn't be a mistake. But, on the contrary, she now felt more used and changed and alone than she ever could have imagined possible.

/ I can witness the internal battles, the fire you so tirelessly fight against, these feelings that are the truest things you've ever felt - but which are so violent and indescribable that you pretend they aren't yours, but some residual aftermath of a previously-read mind. You're frightened. I feel this. I know it as a fact. All I have to do is look into your eyes. /

As Emma's voice rang inside her mind, a hand was suddenly resting on her shoulder. A white, gloved hand. Jean's face canted slightly to the side - and she met Emma's bright blue eyes. She was surprised to find something there that, despite the brash words and unyielding honesty, she had never seen nor in her wildest dreams would have expected - hurt. Hurt of the very same variety she herself was tortured with, mirrored back to her in tones of wounded sapphire. She was so startled that she opened her mind wider, curious, and felt Emma's presence invade every corner, every dark spot, every blemish. She, in turn, opened her mind for Jean, showing her, letting her feel every ugly emotion, every pained and envious thought.

/ But I do understand. I understand more than you can imagine, more than anyone could imagine. And it's so bloody excruciating, because I loathe you, Jean Grey - really I do, you're uptight and prudish, not to mention agonizingly condescending and utterly irritating - but fuck me if I don't feel as if somehow, by some sick twist of fate, you're my absolute equal. /

Jean canted her head upwards to look at Emma through heavily-lidded eyes, through furrowed brows. She wasn't quite sure what to think of this. Seeing Emma so brutally honest, so willingly open, it was unnerving and liberating and endearing all at the same time. She was having a hard time believing that this was the same woman who cast her penetrating looks across the room at dinner, the same woman with whom she'd had many an uncivil, brief and unkind altercation with in the past. But despite all this, one thing was for certain: beneath the frosty exterior she too was slowly cracking; first at the edges, tiny and vein-like - an intricate map of breaking crystal, piece by piece. Why she hadn't realized this before could be blamed on her own disinterest or even on Emma herself for keeping her mind so closely guarded, or on both of them for being too damn stubborn and jealous of one another to take the time to realize that their situations were almost identical.

One rather annoying thing about having such a tense relationship with a fellow telepath was this: there were certain truths that, though you may rather beat yourself over the head with it than accept it, you could not deny. The truth between Emma and Jean was that very deep down, in the lowest and most private level of their souls, they were and always had been uncannily alike - whether they liked it or not. It was easy to disregaurd it because on the surface, they couldn't have been less opposite. With Logan and Scott, the situation had been the same and different. They were both hard-headed alpha males ... and non-telepaths. They wouldn't have accepted, let alone believed, that they were so similar had someone had the courage to point it out to them, whereas Emma and Jean had no choice but to believe it because they could see it in one another. It was one of the most noteworthy things that rubbed on their nerves when it came to the other woman, one of the things that they coldly ignored, one of the things that they were determined to forget about because they wouldn't be caught dead comparing themselves to someone they considered to be a personal arch-nemesis and thoroughly dislikeable human being.

But despite repeated efforts to stifle it out, the truth was always there, lingering just beneath the surface. And right about now it finally seemed to be coming out into the open, onto firm ground, into a space and time in which both women were thrown unceremoniously into a traumatic event that left them absolutely no one to cling to but one another. And neither of them were stupid enough to let such a gift go, even if it meant giving up their dignity to the one person they never thought they'd have to.

"All right." Jean's voice broke the silence, even and slow, fading at the edges with surrender. She threw all pretenses out the window, all of her fears and frustrations and hatred, and looked directly into Emma's eyes. Emma's gaze locked onto hers, and it was understood - without a single exchange of word or thought - that at this moment all bets were off, and that tonight may be the last night that would ever matter again in their lives.

"What do you want to know?"

Emma breathed in deeply. Her posture was straight as a ruler, but her eyes had lost their malicious sparkle. "Did you really believe that you and Scott were soul mates?" The word tasted odd in Emma's mouth; foreign and metallic.

The air was thin between them, and a gentle gust of breeze made a flurry of snowflakes scatter suddenly around their feet. "I ... don't know." Jean said softly. Her brow had begun to furrow; it was a strangely honest answer, and it had come surprisingly quickly. "I don't know if I've ever believed in soul mates. I think that Scott, at least during the early years of our relationship, believed we were. He used to tell me I was made for him. That we were made for each other." The snowflakes long since settled, Jean glanced down and dragged a foot gently across the ground. "Whether that was true or not, I've always loved him. I've always been in love with him, even when times were rough." She looked up at Emma, her eyes unblinking now and touched with cold. "And I know that he was always in love with me, right up until the day he died."

Emma stepped closer. "...You think I didn't know that?" It was a deathbed whisper. "You think I didn't know that it wasn't me he was thinking of when we were together? That he blessed that wretched visor of his every single day because it allowed his true feelings to be so concealed from me - or so he thought? I know that he never loved me, Jean. It wasn't a question of that."

"Did you love him?" Jean asked, her voice soft.

Emma was silent. And then, turning her eyes back to the other woman as if coming to some truthful finality, "In many ways, yes. In others, no. I was drawn to him. Surely you of all people can understand that sort of magnetic pull."

It was Jean's turn to remain silent.

Emma went on. "I was drawn to him because he was so dignified. So confident. So ... real." She chuckled to herself. "I'd never been with a man like that before. But he did have this rather irritating personal confliction," she added after a beat, glancing over to meet Jean's eyes. The redhead looked at her expectantly, as if to say '...what?'

"He was in love with you."

Jean bowed her head to her chest. Her eyes snapped shut.

"And I remember watching you one day. I was watching you play with the children in the yard - with a kite, or something of that sort - and you were teaching one of the younger girls how to use her own telekinetic abilities to steady it in the air. She was watching you do it with such awe, how you had such an abundance of patience and control. She wanted, so genuinely, to be just like you. And I thought to myself - or rather, tried to convince myself - I could do that. What does she have that I don't?" Here Emma smiled generously - and against all of Jean's previous conclusions about the woman, against everything she'd come to believe about her, her heart broke. It was painfully obvious to her now that that smile was just another perfect mask, another way of hiding that deeply imbedded pain. But her eyes were still sparkling. "And the answer came back resounding. Everything. She has everything that I don't."

Jean blinked back rush of tears, and shook her head. "Don't say that."

"It's true."

"But I felt the same way. After I - when I - well, when I returned to the Institute and found that Scott had moved on and found someone else, I'll admit, I thought it would be a breeze to win him back. And then I saw you." She shook her head again. "You were everything I wasn't, everything I knew he'd always wanted that I never had or gave him. I just ... grew angry. I shut myself off. I became spiteful."


	2. Chapter 2

Emma was smiling again. "Well." She said. "It seems we're both in the same boat. I dislike you with good reason, you dislike me with equally good reason ..."

Jean sighed. She was suddenly feeling rather weary. "So what now? What if it's all true? What do you want from me, Emma?"

Emma was silent a long moment, and then: "I want you to hurt me."

"Hurt you?" Jean sounded utterly bewildered.

"Yes, hurt me."

"I don't think I understand."

"It's really quite simple. Hurt. To slap, kick, gouge, bite ... really, it doesn't matter, dear, the tedious particulars are up to you."

"I don't want to hurt you, Emma."

The blonde's lips twitched, and then they slowly melted into a knowing smile. She canted her head, blinked slowly. All of this made Jean feel distinctly ... something.

"Don't you?" She asked a moment later, and to this, truthfully, Jean could do nothing but stay silent.

"Now that we're sharing," Emma continued, her carefully constructed and trademark matter-of-fact tone resuming its precedence, "I don't see why we can't just ... experiment a little bit. Aren't you tired of beating the living hell out of the punching bags in the gym, pretending that they have my face? Or setting the danger room controls to produce lifeless holograms wearing my costume?" She grinned. "I know that I am."

Still nothing.

Emma paused, and jumped head first into the roaring hurricane. "You want me, Jean. You've always wanted me all to yourself."

Jean stared. Her mouth hung open slightly, and she scoffed.

Was it just her, or did this conversation suddenly become sexual?

"You can deny it, but really, there's no need to keep up that charade. We're far too deep into this now-"

"-Bullshit," Jean spat, cutting Emma off much to the blonde's surprised contentment. She hadn't thought Jean would crack so soon. It showed that the redhead could give as well as she could get when the title of Dr. Jean Grey was blasted away, and there was nothing remaining but raw, fiery Phoenix. The woman actually had guts.

"I never wanted you. I wanted Scott. I wanted my husband back."

"You say the title so esteemed, so glaringly grandiose, as if it actually manages to retain any sacred meaning these days."

"It does to me. It did, to us."

"Simply an observation on my part, Jean, no matter ... and so if you can't admit it yourself, let me explain to you why. In wanting Scott back, you wanted to conquer the force that had taken him away from you in the first place. Remove the competition, the obstacle. But it was much more than a simple elementary task - it was a vehement need, wasn't it? The fact that you wanted Scott so badly, the fact that he might have been your soul mate, only magnifies the situation. It's simple psycho-analytical reasoning, really. Let's put it into terms you can easily comprehend, shall we? You're looking at me like you don't understand, but perhaps I'm just reading you wrong ... in any case, let's just say this: in this equation, the universe is simplified down to one controlled and one independent variable - essentially, you and I." Her eyes shimmered and danced like the flame of a candle. "In order to destroy a human being completely, Jean, you must ravish them both mentally and physically - sexually. You've no problem with the 'mentally'. We all know that if provoked enough you could reduce my or anyone else's thought processes to a bland porridge-like substance with a passing glance. So that's one check off the list, lucky for you. Unfortunately, the remaining obstacle just happens to be my forte, just as the other is yours." A slow, razor-thin smile began to form on Emma's lips. "Forget the battle of wits you're pulling for, Jean. We'd be butting antlers well into next month. Let's see you be a real woman and defeat me at my own game. Test your endurance." She licked her lips, looking for all the world like a lioness approaching her prey. "Conquer me. It's the only path to freedom."

Jean, who had been listening with contempt, sneered. Her chest filled with ash and spark, and her fingers twitched as they hung at her sides, but she said nothing.

Emma canted her head to the side as if arguing with a particularly stubborn student. "Don't make me make the first move, Jean. It's the least I could do, offering you a foul shot, what with stealing your husband and all." She taunted effortlessly.

Jean's hand twitched again. Emma caught sight of it this time.

She continued. "Come on, no one's watching. Doesn't it just kill you, Jean? No pun intended, of course ... thinking about your husband with his hands around another woman's hips - my hips - his own ramming into me ... caressing my breasts ... filled with burning pleasure and screaming my name ... " And the blonde's eyelids fluttered deliciously, the moan that escaped her throat enough to bring any other self-respecting woman a multitude of shame. At the same time she projected an image that seared and branded itself into Jean's mind, but whether it was an actual memory or a fictional picture conjured to the most raunchy, explicit, exaggerated extent by Emma's own sick sense of humor Jean couldn't tell.

It didn't even matter. The fire flared sky-high inside of her and she brought a hand up to slap swiftly across Emma's face, not a thought in her head, driven only by carnal hate and passion.

Emma's pale face rolled slowly back to the front to look at Jean, her hair sprawled across her eyes and cheeks from the impact. She was smiling blissfully. "Oh, yes. That was positively lascivious. Again."

And Jean's palm made hard, rough contact with Emma's cheek once more. The redhead's teeth were clamped tightly shut, her breathing labored and on its way to gasping. She'd involuntarily stepped closer to Emma and her heartbeat was pumping rapidly through her neck.

"God." Emma gushed, breath hissing through her teeth. "I love a good sadist. This is heavenly." Her head was rolling gently from side to side as adrenaline rushed through her veins, a faint pink glow starting in the hollow of her pale cheeks. "Tell me something - was Scott a fetishist also? Does it run in the Summers family? You see I never got to ask or find out, the man wasn't into much more than straight sex while we were together-" And Emma's hand caught Jean's mid-swipe this time.

Emma bared her teeth. Suddenly she was bursting with a stewing rage, and an uncontrollable hunger for the heat radiating off of Jean's body and mind. She wanted to claim that inferno for her own. Her blue eyes flickered darkly.

Jean said nothing. She didn't struggle. She let Emma's fingers dig trenches in her wrist, let the inevitable bruises form. Staring at Emma, her chest rising and falling in deep and uneven waves, she simmered. She was a ticking bomb, a star borne of resolution and made of flame and light.

"Bravo, Jean." Emma purred. "Two strikes. Now it's my turn."

She grinned, a mouthful of pure ivory. Her roseate lips curled upward slightly.

Without warning, she shoved Jean backwards - grasping the woman's other wrist roughly as she began to struggle - and did not stop until she felt the redhead's back crash with a hollow thud into the scaly, snow-speckled trunk of a nearby evergreen.

Jean's eyes snapped shut with the impact, her lungs ached and her breath was lost momentarily. She was only just beginning to gain her steadiness and bearings back when she felt her hands thrust upwards, the skin there being slammed into the knotted sharpness of the crumbling bark above her.

Blinking the stars from her eyes, she heard her sweater rip, felt something clamp mercilessly onto her bare shoulder. It was warm and wet; it pressed into her skin like a dull knife.

Emma's tongue swirled gently across Jean's skin, intending to lap up any blood she may have coaxed from the bite, but there was none.

Jean was shivering now, but not just from the cold.

Emma whispered in Jean's ear, asking if this was what she wanted, what she needed, though it was more of a statement than a question as so many of Emma's "inquiries" seemed to be. When she pulled away, a thin wisp of vapor rose from the depths of her mouth.

"You wanted to know what Scott had given you up for. As much as you wanted me killed, you were ... curious." Teeth nipped at Jean's earlobe, and Jean gulped in the stinging winter air through her nose, determined to show as little emotion as possible.

"Shall I tell you a secret?" Emma purred through her teeth, her face beginning to tremble just slightly with anticipation as she brought her face close to Jean's, moving as if to brush her skin against the other woman's but coming only close enough to feel the nerve static ricocheting off the surface. "So was I."

She tore away finally and saw the rage and the lust that sprang from it mirrored back to her in the blazing emerald of Jean's eyes.

Jean did not reply, but she never lifted her stare from Emma's. The green and the blue were projecting into one another, mixing, caressing, twisting around each other until it was uncertain which hue belonged to which woman, until they were both broken down into electricity and glass, merging to form windows and pathways that grew exponentially into forever.

/ Do you understand now? Do you see? / Emma hissed into Jean's mind, ripping open their mental link wider as Jean tried to close it. / It's you and I, Jean. I'm the only one who can take your pain away. You're the only one who can take mine. We're equal. / And then, after a pause,

/ ... Let me save you. /

Jean said nothing for a moment, but then her jaw tilted, her lips parted. Her whole body was throbbing.

She'd stopped thinking logically a long time ago.

A soft push of air from Jean's mouth made Emma's hair flutter slightly, and that was all the sign she needed.


	3. Chapter 3

She spared Jean a fragmented thought that was only halfway inside her mind - with the other half lost and floating somewhere in the astral abyss - before her mouth collapsed onto Jean's.

/ -Need this- /

The kiss was speeding faster than either of them could even imagine, leaving both women struggling desperately to keep up as their lips wrenched one another's apart, Emma's tongue lashing at Jean's feverishly while Jean pushed against every part of Emma possible and accessible until her muscles ached.

/ -HATE you-

-More-

-please-

-HARDER-

-willneverforgiveyou-

-Don't care-

-Don't stop- /

Their thoughts and feelings were crashing into one another, flashing for split seconds only to be shoved aside and replaced with another, shape shifting at the speed of thought, slowly growing more and more reckless and less and less coherent. Colors flashed like sun-splashed sequins behind their eyes and feeling ruled and raged, rushing like foaming water against the rugged shore rocks as they tumbled through each other's mental fortresses in a tornado-like fit until they were all but destroyed.

But they allowed the chaos to resume with a realized consent, because underneath the unstable and erratic clashes and intrusion, the despair and desperation reigned.

Emma felt like ice and white silk against Jean's tongue. She could feel the snow tumbling down her skin, beneath her clothes. Emma had released her wrists and though the imprint of the jagged bark blazed red and pulsed with pain, she still clutched handfuls of Emma's hair a little too tightly until she could feel her fingernails dig an inch into the skin at the narrow base of her neck.

The White Queen growled low in her throat - Jean's nerves rumbled with the vibration - and she dug long, rigid fingers into Jean's upper thigh before ramming the other woman's body more roughly into the tree. She spread Jean's legs and pressed her stomach against Jean's own.

/ -Fuck- /

The breathy moans were expelled aloud, but the thoughts and words and curses were too intense to be expressed in anything but a shakily direct thought.

Without moving a hand or laying so much as a finger there, Jean reached out and began to stroke up the length of Emma's legs, moving to graze harshly between them.

The blonde buckled violently against her; the telekinetic contact rendering her quite breathless.

/ -More- /

Emma's voice inside Jean's mind was more a rasp, the low roar of an Amazonian cat than that of the pure-bred New Englander and professional businesswoman/manipulator that she had grown to know and loathe so well.

Jean wondered briefly if Emma was like this with everyone she fucked, and as an astral fingertip slipped beneath the fabric at Emma's slender waist and dipped, pulsating, searching until it pressed against that savory spot between her thighs, the answer came back a resounding

/ -NO, bloody Christ - fuck, harder- /

Emma's slight Britishesque inflection seemed to grow thicker with arousal and vexation. Her hips were thrusting against the invisible force desperately, beautifully manicured nails digging into Jean's shoulder blades, muscles straining, half begging and half demanding.

Jean ceased abruptly, and Emma snarled in frustration.

"You know," Jean muttered breathlessly, "this doesn't mean I like you."

When Emma's eyes fluttered open, the frustration had vanished and she was grinning. "Of course not, darling. I'd expect nothing less." And she licked up the length of Jean's throat, which was dampened slightly with perspiration. Jean slacked an inch or two down the tree's trunk; Emma caught her on her knee.

Her mouth felt like it was on fire from the contact. Jean's skin was positively festering, the Phoenix within her stretching its wings, so much so that the snow around them was beginning to melt.

While Jean was still limp, Emma reached between them and tore Jean's belt away, dropping a hand against her abdomen and then beneath it, reaching lower, sliding her panties to the side with remarkable expertise before slipping a slender finger inside of her.

She watched the other woman's face intently and with a predatory gaze - the shiver of her skin, the flutter of her eyes, the clench of her jaw.

Emma withdrew her hand a moment later. She made sure Jean was watching when she slipped two fingers of that hand into her mouth and sucked gently on them.

"You taste like hot maple syrup." Her voice was low and unwavering. Her tongue slipped out and touched the middle of her lip.

She smiled.

*******Author's note: I'll update a new chapter soon, please read and review. Thank you very much. :D**


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn't long after this that they stumbled over one another into the greenhouse, their hands grabbing and exploring, the skin beneath their clothes so scorched that they couldn't strip them off fast enough. Hot breath and cold air mingling caused a thick layer of fog to spread itself against the old wood-paneled windows, and Jean's mind was spiraling so far beyond her realization that she was inadvertently causing the glass to rattle and warp grudgingly in its confines.

Later, Jean would tell her teammate that the spilled plants and cracked columns were a result of a brief slip in control while she was taking a walk on the grounds, and that she'd replace them, that it wouldn't happen again. She apologized profusely, telling (reminding, really) Ororo that she hadn't been herself lately, though she wasn't sure if she was apologizing more to herself or to her white-haired friend.

She and Emma didn't leave together that evening; in fact, she can't really even remember clearly what exactly happened after those first few hours had passed.

She doesn't remember anything she chooses to forget these days.

Emma has come to her room often since then. Sometimes she stays there for hours, deep into the night, and sometimes she stays only a few minutes, but she always leaves before morning. They've stopped teasing one another like they did the first time, stopped taking it lightly as if it were a simple weekend fling to fuck the pain away. They've realized that this is deeper and larger than both of them no matter how hard they try to convince themselves of the opposite, and they know deep down that the pain will always shine through the lust, and that that inexplicable need will always overshadow any coherent conclusion they may try to come to.

But none of this stops them from continuing.

When they make love they never scream each other's names, or so much as whisper them in an unconscious thought - they're much too marred and jaded for that sort of awful cliché. They never scream or whisper anything at all, for that matter. They don't need to. Often, though, they cling to one another so tightly that the bruises and lacerations they've already given to each other couldn't have a chance in hell of ever healing, the sheer force of it causing bruises all their own. They hold each other not in a loving way, not in an affectionate way, but in a way that is desperate and dark, as if believing that if they let their grip slack even a fraction they might loose one another to that black abyss, loose that comfort, or worse, loose themselves.

At mealtimes and during team meetings, they don't speak to one another. If they do, it's no more than two words in passing. They cover their ruined skin with sweaters and long sleeves and never look anyone in the eye. Jean is so changed by Scott's death and Emma so purely evil that their teammates pay little attention to either of them anymore, and even if they began finger-fucking each other under the table in the middle of dinner some Friday night Jean doubted if they'd even notice them then.

Sometimes they go out to the lake together in the middle of the night to look at the stars. They watch the thin layer of ice crack at the edges with Jean's telekinetic nudging, and when the winter fades sometimes they skip rocks across its glossy surface. Laying face-up, staring at the heavens, they talk. In many ways they are more honest and open with one another than Jean and Scott ever were. They answer one another's questions without remorse, without shame, but with trust and sometimes with loathing - either at themselves or at each other. Still, even after all this time and change, hate is a fundamental part of their relationship.

Sometimes when they talk, they speak exclusively mind-to-mind, never uttering a single word aloud; but often they only converse in wholly non-telepathic means, as if the concept of using telepathy hadn't even occurred to them.

They always leave separately. They choose separate paths, separate entrances, and more often than not they don't exchange goodbyes. They know what the other is thinking, and Emma could be lying beside the lake, staring off into the rolling hills, and know that Jean will simply stand and leave a moment or two before she actually does. She never looks over to actually watch her go, even though she wants to.

Months pass, and this routine doesn't change. In many ways, though it isn't terribly satisfying, it's comforting. A raft in the middle of a dark, churning and unpredictable ocean.

Jean still doesn't like to think about it. She showers Emma's sweat, her saliva, her touch, from her skin and pretends that this makes everything okay. When she's actually with Emma, sometimes she's frightened because it begins to feel more real, more like love than she would have ever imagined or would have wanted to imagine. Where Emma's hands used to leave vivid marks of purple and blue across her body, as time goes by, they're now caressing her gently and nothing more. They hold her. Emma's arms embrace her, her lips kiss and trail, in a way that makes Jean terrified.

Emma isn't in love with Jean. The woman had been right: she's never been in love with a single person or cognizant being in her entire life. She refuses, and would resent, the implication.

But when she holds Jean, something inside of her stirs and stirs and doesn't stop.

Emma is an impulsive person. That hasn't changed. She knows she isn't in love, but one night while her limbs are intertwined with Jean's and the wind is howling softly through the open window, she murmurs something into Jean's ear.

Jean's heart freezes. For a moment she panics, and a bursting wall of cold water seems to engulf her. But then Emma presses her lips to Jean's ear, and her scent - sans over-priced Dior - fills her head. She's crashing back into her paper reality, and a single tear runs down her cheek. She smiles - really smiles - for the first time since last Christmas when she kissed Scott underneath the mistletoe, and gives Emma's hand a squeeze that is, for some reason, completely different than any other she'd given her before. The redhead whispers something back into the night air.

Emma's heart settles. She lets out the breath that she'd been holding, and buries her face into Jean's neck.

Tonight, she won't leave. She'll sleep beside Jean, and be there in the morning when she wakes


End file.
